Emperor Norton
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ashleynaftule.bsky.social
Emperor Norton
@ashleynaftule.bsky.social
Playwright. Associate Artistic Director at Space55 in downtown Phoenix. Freelance journalist. Next play "Selena and Judy Go Dancing" runs June 6-15 at Metro Arts.

Check out my radio play "Radio Free Europa":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbQ23qB5-6c
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You know that horrible feeling that keeps widening inside us like a yawning chasm - the feeling that everything is both too much and not enough everywhere all the time, that life is textureless, weightless, and your attention is always fractured? That's so much because of the destruction of curation
The Washington Post is launching a personalized AI podcast, saying users will be able to "shape their own briefing, select their topics, set their lengths, pick their hosts and soon even ask questions using our Ask The Post AI technology."
December 10, 2025 at 6:28 PM
You will be visited by 3 spirits
December 9, 2025 at 11:21 PM
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December 9, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Been on a Barthelme kick lately and it rules so hard that his “Me and Miss Mandible”is what would’ve happened if Kafka wrote Billy Madison
December 9, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Watching Laurel & Hardy in “Liberty”: hmm 2 men keep getting caught pants-less in an alleyway or on top of each other in a construction site, my Gay Subtext Detector is lightly pinging

Watching L&H in “That’s My Wife” where Laurel pretends to be Hardy’s wife: the Detector just exploded
December 9, 2025 at 8:00 PM
December 9, 2025 at 7:37 PM
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This is why I think the combination of consolidation of media and tech companies, and the roll out of LLMs and AI is so aggressive. For about 20 years, the average users experience w/the internet was a riotous democracy that spawned a slew of social movements. They want an end to it.
More and more I think the purpose of LLM’s is to turn humanity into helpless idiots dependent on Silicon Valley’s digital snake oil
Jimmy Fallon: "And do you use ChatGPT when raising your baby?"

Sam Altman: "I cannot imagine figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT."
December 9, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Tim Curry Pennywise was good because he looked just enough like a normal clown that if some random person saw them on the street they'd be like "yep, that's a regular-ass clown." Anyone who sees the Bill Skarsgård Pennywise buying coconut water at a CVS would immediately call in a drone strike
December 9, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Dreamt I was watching the ending to BEAU TRAVAIL last night where instead of Corona it was Elmer Fudd singing “The Rhythm of the Night”
December 9, 2025 at 4:45 PM
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On the new episode of The Important Cinem Club, we discuss the massively popular Crazy Cats from Japan! You probably haven't heard of them... but they were in 14 movies together.

soundcloud.com/the-importan...
#450 - Japan's Crazy Cats!
We dicuss the Japanese comedy group THE CRAZY CATS - and talk about their films BIG EXPLOSION, MEXICAN FREE-FOR-ALl and MONSIEUR ZIVACO. Join the Patreon now for an exclusive episode every week, acce
soundcloud.com
December 6, 2025 at 9:40 PM
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Coming around on the Chapo theory that he's leaking all of these to generate headlines that prominently mention him having a girlfriend
December 5, 2025 at 9:17 PM
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The end of Portrait in Crystal really throws you a curveball
December 6, 2025 at 11:23 AM
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David Lynch's DP Ron García on Sheryl Lee's miraculous performance in FIRE WALK WITH ME.
December 6, 2025 at 4:01 PM
I’ve got a fever—and the only prescription is Crazy Cats cinema
December 6, 2025 at 3:33 AM
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This is one of the strangest films you'll ever see; the stop-motion work is smooth as silk and the story is a literal fever dream. I found this vis @declouxj.bsky.social's Christmas-movie-a-day countdown, which you should check out.
Seasonal favorites with Nutcracker Fantasy (1979), a splendid stop motion version from Sanrio's attempt to break into the film market. youtu.be/7TGtpDq0Ekk?...
Nutcracker Fantasy - Remastered English Version
YouTube video by ATV
youtu.be
December 5, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Hey, so what are the odds that everyone involved in turning America into Casino World get led to the guillotine, can we put money on that
Soon, CNN will run live odds on world events where its viewers can gamble on them in real time on their smartphones. One recent Kalshi betting market that allowed people to bet on whether Palestinians in Gaza would suffer mass starvation.
CNN Partners With a Gambling App That Lets You Wager on Starvation in Gaza
The app company’s two biggest investors are also heavily invested in the Israeli military.
buff.ly
December 5, 2025 at 8:52 PM
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in the end, the future of cinema is Hundreds of Beavers
December 5, 2025 at 5:05 PM
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virtue signaling
virtue believing in
virtue aspiration toward
virtue expression
virtue having
December 4, 2025 at 11:49 PM
I think I got My Thing figured out for 2026–I’m going to be The Last Person To Get Really Into Balatro
December 4, 2025 at 11:17 PM
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Found the relevant pages, feels like an eyewitness account of the creation of the world, yeah that's hyperbole but holy shit
December 4, 2025 at 6:28 PM
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pantone just named landlord white the color of the year 2026, WE NEED TO BUILD HOUSES
December 4, 2025 at 2:09 PM
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this feels like another iteration of the "what if I give a homeless man money and he buys booze" thing. So then he bought booze, so what, you are not his personal life coach. You did your bit now go live your life.
Balancing "no person with a disability should be denied accommodations" with "it's important to discourage non-disabled people from pretending to be disabled to take advantage of these accommodations" is really difficult and I don't have a great answer for what anyone should do about it.
December 3, 2025 at 3:40 PM
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We live in a country where restaurants trash thousands of pounds of perfectly good food every day while huge swathes of people live in food deserts and I'm supposed to get upset if someone gets a parking spot they aren't entitled to for 20 minutes? I don't have few enough problems to care about it
December 3, 2025 at 3:44 PM
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i hope trump and republicans keep running on slogans like “the epstein files are democrat hoax” and “affordability is a scam”
Trump: "The word 'affordability' is a Democrat scam"
December 2, 2025 at 10:12 PM
December 2, 2025 at 7:08 PM